SteamOS beta now supports non-UEFI systems and dual-booting

A new version of Valve’s SteamOS beta has hit the web. The latest release potentially broadens the pool of testers for the living room-friendly operating system by adding support for older, non-UEFI systems and dual booting, although the company still...

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) (pronounced as an initialism U-E-F-I or like "unify" without the n) is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. UEFI is meant to replace the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) firmware interface, present in all IBM PC-compatible personal computers.[1][2] In practice, most UEFI images provide legacy support for BIOS services. UEFI can support remote diagnostics and repair of computers, even without another operating system.[3]

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Without UEFI, SteamOS will need to interface differently with the system Firmware.

Edit:
I was confused as well, which is why I looked up wiki to see what they had to say.

I thought Bios settings were bios settings regardless of the input method?

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UEFI was a standard agreed upon about 6+ years ago. Most motherboards are already running it. But I think a few hold-outs, like Gigabyte, didn't support it until 2011. For the most part, I think this allows beta testers to install on those older first generation Intel Core processors.

UEFI is all around better than the old 16-bit BIOS. You want it for faster boots, improved integration with your OS, support for larger hard drives and memory, and pre-OS executable applications.

But, as for compatibility issues, mostly that's found under a Windows 8 dual boot box where people are running UEFI in secure mode. The secure mode requires a digitally signed OS and helps against malware attacks. This made issues for GRUB 2 since it's open source and not digitally signed.

No one, but no one, in the Linux community likes Microsoft's mandated deployment of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Secure Boot option in Windows 8 certified PCs. But, how Linux should handle the fixes required to deal with this problem remains a hot-button issue. Now, as the debate continues hot and heavy, Linus Torvalds, Linux's founder and de facto leader, spells out how he thinks Linux should deal with Secure Boot keys.

Torvalds was mad as hell with proposals to place Secure Boot keys and their management into the Linux kernel itself. Torvalds called the idea "moronic."